I’m going to Smyrna to bring back my fortune,” said Quintus Servilius Caepio to his brother-in-law, Marcus Livius Drusus, as they walked home from the Forum Romanum.
Drusus stopped, one pointed black eyebrow flying upward. “Oh! Do you think that’s wise?” he asked, then could have bitten off his tactless tongue.
“What do you mean, wise?” Caepio asked, looking pugnacious.
Out went Drusus’s hand to grip Caepio’s right arm. “Just what I said, Quintus. I am not implying that your fortune in Smyrna is the Gold of Tolosa—nor for that matter that your father stole the Gold of Tolosa! But the fact remains that almost all of Rome does believe your father guilty, and also believes that the fortune in your name in Smyrna is really the Gold of Tolosa. In the old days, to have brought it back might have earned you nothing more harmful than black looks and a degree of odium you would have found a nuisance in your public career. But nowadays there is a lex Servilia Glaucia de repetundis on the tablets, don’t forget. Gone is the time when a governor could peculate or extort and see his loot safe because he put it in someone else’s name. Glaucia’s law specifically provides for the recovery of illegally acquired monies from their ultimate recipients as well as from the guilty party. Using Uncle Lucius Tiddlypuss doesn’t work anymore.”
“I remind you that Glaucia’s law is not retroactive,” said Caepio stiffly.
“All it will take is one tribune of the plebs in a mood of vengeance, a quick appeal to the Plebeian Assembly to invalidate that particular loophole, and you’ll find the lex Servilia Glaucia is retroactive,” said Drusus firmly. “Truly, brother Quintus, think about it! I don’t want to see my sister and her children deprived of both paterfamilias and fortune, nor do I want to see you sitting out the years as an exile in Smyrna.’’
“Why did it have to be my father they picked on?” demanded Caepio angrily. “Look at Metellus Numidicus! Home again just covered in glory, while my poor father died in permanent exile!”
“We both know why,” said Drusus patiently, wishing for the thousandth time at least that Caepio was brighter.
“The men who run the Plebeian Assembly can forgive a high nobleman anything—especially after a little time goes by. But the Gold of Tolosa was unique. And it disappeared while in your father’s custody. More gold than Rome has in her Treasury! Once people here made up their minds your father took it, they conceived a hatred for him that has nothing to do with right, justice, or patriotism.” He started walking again, and Caepio followed.’ ‘Think it out properly, Quintus, please! If the sums you bring home total anything like ten percent of the value of the Gold of Tolosa, you’ll have the whole of Rome saying your father did take it, and you inherited it.”
Caepio began to laugh. “They won’t,” he said positively. “I have already thought everything out properly, Marcus. It’s taken me all these years to solve the problem, but solve it, I have. Truly!”
“How?” asked Drusus skeptically.
“First of all, none except you will know where I’ve really gone and what I’m really doing. As far as Rome will know— as Livia Drusa and Servilia Caepionis will know—I’m in Italian Gaul-across-the-Padus, looking into property. I’ve been talking about doing so for months; no one will be surprised or bother to query it. Why should they, when I’ve deliberately harangued people with my plans to set up whole towns full of foundries geared to make anything from ploughshares to chain mail? And as it’s the property side of the project I’m interested in, no one can criticize my senatorial integrity. Let others run the foundries—I’m happy to own the towns!”
Caepio sounded so eager that Drusus (who had hardly heard his brother-in-law on the subject because he had hardly listened) stared at him now in surprise.
“You sound as if you mean to do it,” Drusus said.
“Oh, I do. The foundry towns represent just one of many things in which I intend to invest my money from Smyrna. As I’m going to keep my investments in Roman territories rather than in Rome herself, there will be no new amounts of my money coming into city financial institutions. Nor do I think the Treasury will be clever enough—or have time enough—to look into who, what, and how much I am investing in business enterprises far from the city of Rome,” said Caepio.
Drusus’s expression had changed to amazement. “Quintus Servilius, I am staggered! I didn’t think you had so much guile in you,” he said.
“I thought you might be staggered,” said Caepio smugly, then spoiled the effect by adding, “though I must admit I had a letter from my father not long before he died, telling me what I must do. There’s an enormous amount of money in Smyrna.”
“Yes, I imagine there is,” said Drusus dryly.
“No, it is not the Gold of Tolosa!” cried Caepio, throwing his hands out. “There’s my mother’s fortune as well as my father’s! He was clever enough to move his money before he was prosecuted, in spite of that conceited cunnus Norbanus’s measures to prevent his doing so, like throwing, my father in prison between trial and exile. Some of the money has been gradually returned to Rome over the years, but not sufficient to draw attention. Which is why—as you yourself have cause to know!—I still live modestly.”
“I do certainly have cause to know,” said Drusus, who had been housing his brother-in-law and his brother-in-law’s family since the elder Caepio had been convicted. “One thing does puzzle me, however. Why not just leave your fortune in Smyrna?”
“Can’t,” said Caepio quickly. “My father said it wouldn’t be safe forever in Smyrna—or any other city in Asia Province with the right banking facilities, like Cos— or even Rhodes, he said. He said Asia Province will revolt against Rome. He said that the tax-farmers there have made everyone hate Rome. He said sooner or later the whole province will rise up.”
“If it did, we’d soon get it back,” said Drusus.
“Yes, I know that! But in the meantime, do you think all the gold and silver and coins and treasures on deposit in Asia Province would just sit there safe and sound? My father said the first thing the revolutionaries would do would be to pillage the temples and the banks,” said Caepio.
Drusus nodded. “He’s probably right. So you’re going to move your money. But to Italian Gaul?”
“Only some, only some. Some of it will go to Campania. And some to Umbria. And some to Etruria. Then there are places like Massilia, Utica, and Gades—some will go to them. All up the western end of the Middle Sea.”
“Why don’t you admit the truth, Quintus—at least to me, your brother-in-law twice over?” asked Drusus a little wearily. “Your sister is my wife, and my sister is your wife. We are so tied together we can never be free of each other. So admit it, at least to me! It is the Gold of Tolosa.”
“It is not the Gold of Tolosa,” said Quintus Servilius Caepio stubbornly.
Thick, thought Marcus Livius Drusus, leading the way into the peristyle-garden of his house, the finest mansion in Rome; he is as thick as porridge which has boiled too long. And yet... There he is, sitting on fifteen thousand talents of gold his father smuggled from Spain to Smyrna eight years ago, after pretending it was stolen en route from Tolosa to Narbo. A cohort of good Roman troops perished guarding that wagon train of gold, but does he care? Did his father—who must have organized their massacre—care? Of course not! All they care about is their precious gold. They’re Servilii Caepiones, the Midases of Rome, can’t be jolted out of their intellectually moribund state unless someone whispers the word “Gold!”
It was January of the year Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus and Publius Licinius Crassus were consuls, and the lotus trees in the Livius Drusus garden were bare, though the magnificent pool and its statues and fountains by Myron still played, thanks to piped warm water. The paintings by Apelles, Zeuxis, Timanthes, and others had been removed from the back walls of the colonnade and put into storage earlier in the year, after Caepio’s two daughters had been caught daubing them with pigments taken from two artists who were restoring the atrium frescoes at the time. Both little girls had been beaten thoroughly, but Drusus had judged it prudent to remove temptation; as the daubs were still fresh, they were able to be removed, yet—who was to say it wouldn’t happen all over again when his own small boy grew a little larger, and more mischievous? Priceless collections of art were best not displayed in houses containing children. He didn’t think Servilia and Servililla would do anything like it again, but there were bound to be more offspring.
His own family was finally started, though not in the way he had hoped for; somehow he and Servilia Caepionis couldn’t seem to make babies. Two years ago they had adopted the youngest son of Tiberius Claudius Nero, a man as impoverished as most of the Claudii of all branches, and delighted to hand over his new child to become heir to the Livius Drusus wealth. It was more usual to adopt the eldest boy of a family, so that the family adopting might be sure the child they took on was sane, healthy, nice-natured and reasonably intelligent; but Servilia Caepionis, starved for a baby, had insisted upon adopting a baby. And Marcus Livius Drusus—who had learned to love his wife dearly, though he had loved her not at all when they married—allowed her to have her way. His own misgivings he placated by making a generous offering to Mater Matuta, enlisting the goddess’s support to ensure that the baby would prove satisfactory when he grew into his wits.
The women were together in Servilia Caepionis’s sitting room just next door to the nursery, and came to greet their men with every evidence of pleasure. Though they were only sisters-in-law, they looked more like real sisters, for both were short, very dark of hair and eye, and owned small, regular features. Livia Drusa—who was Caepio’s wife— was the prettier of the two, as she had escaped the family affliction of stumpy legs, and had the better figure; into the bargain, she fulfilled the criteria of beauty in a woman, for her eyes were very large, well spaced and well opened, and her mouth was tiny, folded like a flower. The nose in between was a little too small to please the connoisseurs, but it escaped the additional disadvantage of straightness by ending in a little knob. Her skin was thick and creamy, her waist was trim, her breasts and hips well curved and ample. Servilia Caepionis—who was Drusus’s wife—was a thinner version of the same; however, her skin had a tendency to produce pimples around chin and nose and her legs were too short for her trunk, her neck too short as well.
Yet it was Marcus Livius Drusus who loved his less pretty wife, Quintus Servilius Caepio who did not love the beautiful one. At the time of their joint marriage eight years earlier, it had been the other way around. Though neither man realized it, the difference lay in the two women; Livia Drusa had loathed Caepio and had been forced to marry him, whereas Servilia Caepionis had been in love with Drusus since childhood. Members of Rome’s highest nobility, both women were model wives of the old kind—obedient, subservient, even-tempered, unfailingly respectful. Then as the years went by and a certain degree of knowledge and familiarity crept into each marriage, Marcus Livius Drusus’s indifference melted in the steady glow of his wife’s affection, an increasing ardor she displayed in their bed, a shared grief because there were no children; whereas Quintus Servilius Caepio’s inarticulate adoration was suffocated by his wife’s unspoken dislike, an increasing coolness she displayed in their bed, a resentment because their children were both girls and none had followed.
A visit to the nursery was mandatory, of course. Drusus made much of his chubby, dark-visaged little boy, who was known as Drusus Nero, and was now almost two years old. Caepio merely nodded to his daughters, who flattened themselves in awe against the wall and said nothing. They were miniature copies of their mother—as dark, as big-eyed, as bud-mouthed—and had all the charm of little girls, had their father only bothered to look. Servilia was almost seven years old, and had learned a great deal from her beating after she decided to improve Apelles’s horse and Zeuxis’s bunch of grapes. She had never been beaten before, and had found the experience more humiliating than painful, more galling than instructive. Lilla on the other hand was an uncomplicated bundle of mischief—irrepressible, strong-willed, aggressive and direct. The beating she had received was promptly forgotten, save that it served to endow her with a healthy respect for her father.
The four adults repaired to the triclinium, there to dine.
“Is Quintus Poppaedius not joining us, Cratippus?” asked Drusus of his steward.
“I have had no word that he isn’t, domine.”
“In which case, we’ll wait,” said Drusus, deliberately ignoring the hostile look he got from Caepio.
Caepio, however, was not about to be ignored. “Why do you put up with that frightful fellow, Marcus Livius?” he asked.
The eyes Drusus turned upon his brother-in-law were stony. “There are some, Quintus Servilius, who ask me that question of you,” he said levelly.
Livia Drusa gasped, choked back a nervous giggle; but, as Drusus expected, the criticism went over Caepio’s head.
“Well, isn’t that what I said?” asked Caepio. “Why do you put up with him?”
“Because he’s my friend.”
“Your leech, more like!” snorted Caepio. “Truly, Marcus Livius, he battens on you. Always arriving without any notice, always with favors to ask, always complaining about us Romans. Who does he think he is?”
“He thinks he’s an Italian of the Marsi,” said a cheerful voice. “Sorry I’m late, Marcus Livius, but you should start your meal without me, as I’ve said before. My excuse for tardiness is impeccable—I’ve been standing very still while Catulus Caesar subjected me to a long lecture on the perfidies of Italians.”
Silo sat on the back edge of the couch upon which Drusus reclined and allowed a slave to remove his boots and wash his feet, then cover them with a pair of socks. When he twisted lightly and lithely onto the couch, he occupied the locus consularis, the place of honor to Drusus’s left; Caepio was reclining upon the couch at right angles to Drusus’s, a less honored position because he was part of the family rather than Drusus’s guest.
“Complaining about me again, Quintus Servilius?” asked Silo without concern, lifting one thin brow at Drusus, and winking.
Drusus grinned, his eyes resting upon Quintus Poppaedius Silo with a great deal more affection in them than they held whenever he looked at Caepio. “My brother-in-law is always complaining about something, Quintus Poppaedius. Take no notice.”
“I don’t,” said Silo, inclining his head in a greeting to the two women, seated on chairs opposite their husbands’ couches.
*
They had met on the battlefield of Arausio, Drusus and Silo, after the battle was over and eighty thousand Roman and Italian Allied troops lay dead—thanks mainly to Caepio’s father. Forged in unforgettable circumstances, their friendship had grown with the years; and with the bond of a mutual concern for the fate of the Italian Allies, a cause to which both men were pledged. They were an unlikely combination, Silo and Drusus, but no amount of complaining on Caepio’s part—or lecturing on the part of some of the Senate’s senior members—had so far managed to drive a wedge between them.
The Italian Silo looked more Roman, the Roman Drusus looked more Italian. Silo had the right kind of nose, the right kind of middling coloring, the right kind of bearing; a tall man and well built, he was a fine-looking fellow save for his eyes, which were a yellowish green—and thus were unseemly, a trifle snakelike because he rarely blinked; however, this was not remarkable in a Marsian, as the Marsi were snake-worshippers and had trained themselves not to blink more than absolutely necessary. Silo’s father had been the leading man of the Marsi, and after his death the son took his place, despite his youth. Moneyed and highly educated, Silo ought by rights to have commanded a great deal of respect from just those Romans who—if they did not blatantly cut him—looked down their noses at him and stooped to patronize him. For Quintus Poppaedius was not a Roman, nor even a holder of the Latin Rights; Quintus Poppaedius Silo was an Italian, and therefore an inferior being.
He came from the rich highlands of the central Italian peninsula, not so very many miles from Rome, where the great Fucine Lake rose and fell in mysterious cycles having nothing to do with rivers or precipitation, and the chain of the Apennines divided to hedge the lands of the Marsi around. Of all Italian peoples, the Marsi were the most prosperous and the most numerous. For centuries they had been Rome’s loyalest allies; it was the proudest boast of the Marsi that no Roman general had ever triumphed without Marsi in his army, nor triumphed over Marsi. Yet even after the passing of so many centuries, the Marsi—like the other Italian nationals—were regarded as unworthy of the full Roman citizenship. In consequence, they could not bid for Roman State contracts, or marry Roman citizens, or appeal to Roman justice in the event of any conviction on a capital charge. They could be flogged within an inch of their lives, they could have their crops or their products or their women stolen without redress at law—if the thief was a Roman.
Had Rome left the Marsi to their own devices in their fertile highlands, all these injustices might have been less intrusive, but—as was true in every part of the peninsula that did not belong outright to Rome—the lands of the Marsi had a Roman implant in their midst in the guise of the Latin Rights colony called Alba Fucentia. And, of course, the town of Alba Fucentia became a city, then the biggest settlement in the whole region, for it had a nucleus of full Roman citizens able to conduct business freely with Rome, and the rest of its population held the Latin Rights, a kind of second-class Roman citizenship allowing most privileges belonging to the full citizenship, save only that those with the ius Latii could not vote in any Roman election; the city’s magistrates automatically inherited the full citizenship for themselves and all their direct descendants when they assumed office. Thus had Alba Fucentia grown at the expense of the old Marsic capital, Marruvium, and sat there as a perpetual reminder of the differences between the Roman and the Italian.
In olden days all of Italy had aspired to eventual owning of Latin Rights and then the full citizenship, for Rome under the doughty and brilliant leadership of men like Appius Claudius Caecus had been conscious of the necessity of change, the prudence in seeing all Italy eventually become properly Roman. But then after some Italian nations had sided with Hannibal during the years when he had marched up and down the Italian peninsula, the attitude of Rome hardened, and the awarding of the full citizenship or even the ius Latii ceased.
One reason had been the swelling immigration of Italians into Roman and Latin towns — and also into Rome herself. Protracted residence in these places brought with it a sharing in the Latin Rights, and even in the full Roman citizenship. The Paeligni had complained of the loss of four thousand of their people to the Latin town of Fregellae, and used this as an excuse not to furnish Rome with soldiers when she demanded them.
From time to time Rome attempted to do something about the problem of mass immigration; these efforts had culminated in a law of the tribune of the plebs Marcus Junius Pennus the year before Fregellae revolted. Pennus expelled every non-citizen from the city of Rome and her colony towns, and in so doing uncovered a scandal which rocked the Roman nobility to its foundations. The consul of four years before, Marcus Perperna, was discovered to be an Italian who had never held the Roman citizenship!
A wave of reaction inside the ranks of those who governed Rome had immediately occurred; one of the leading opponents of Italian advancement was Drusus’s father, Marcus Livius Drusus the Censor, who had connived at the disgrace of Gaius Gracchus and the tearing down of Gaius Gracchus’s laws.
No one could have predicted that the Censor’s son, Drusus—who came young into the role of paterfamilias when his father died in office as censor—would forsake the attitudes and precepts of Drusus the Censor. Of impeccable plebeian-noble ancestry, a member of the College of Pontifices, enormously wealthy, connected by blood and marriage to the patrician houses of Servilius Caepio, Cornelius Scipio and Aemilius Lepidus, young Marcus Livius Drusus ought to have evolved into a pillar of the ultra-conservative faction which controlled the Senate—and therefore controlled Rome. That this had not happened was pure chance; Drusus had been present as a tribune of the soldiers at the battle of Arausio, when the patrician consular Quintus Servilius Caepio had refused to co-operate with the New Man Gaius Mallius Maximus, and in consequence the legions of Rome and her Italian Allies had been annihilated by the Germans in Gaul-across-the-Alps.
When Drusus had returned from Gaul-across-the-Alps, he cherished two new factors in his life; one, the friendship of the Marsian nobleman Quintus Poppaedius Silo, and the other, the knowledge that the men of his own class and background—in particular his father-in-law Caepio—had no appreciation of or respect for the efforts of the soldiers who died at Arausio, be they noble Romans, or Italian auxiliaries, or Roman capite censi.
This was not to say, however, that young Marcus Livius Drusus immediately espoused the aims and aspirations of a true reformer; he was too much a product of his class. But he—like other Roman noblemen before him—had been exposed to an experience which made him think. It was said that the fate of the Brothers Gracchi had been decided when the elder, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus—a scion of the highest nobility in Rome—had journeyed as a young man through Etruria and seen the public lands of Rome in the control of a mere handful of rich Roman men who grazed it using chain gangs of slaves locked up each night in the infamous barracks known as ergastula. Where, Tiberius Gracchus had asked himself, were the smallholder Romans who ought to be in possession of these lands, earning a fruitful living and breeding sons for the army? Product of his class though he was, Tiberius Gracchus had begun to think—and, being a product of his class, he was endowed with a strong sense of right as well as an overwhelming love for Rome.
*
Seven years had gone by since the battle of Arausio, seven years during which Drusus had entered the Senate, served as quaestor in Asia Province, been forced to house his brother-in-law and his brother-in-law’s family after the disgrace of the father Caepio, become a priest of the State religion, productively gardened his personal fortune, seen and heard the disastrous events which led to the murder of Saturninus and his colleagues, and fought on the side of the Senate against Saturninus when he attempted to make himself King of Rome. Seven years during which Drusus had played host to Quintus Poppaedius Silo many times, listened to him talk—and continued himself to think. It was his ardent ambition to solve the vexed question of the Italians in a way properly Roman, entirely peaceful, and pleasing to both sides; to this end he quietly devoted his energies, unwilling to make his intentions public until he had found that ideal solution.
The Marsian Silo was the only man who knew the direction Drusus’s mind was taking, and Silo trod with exquisite delicacy, too shrewd and too prudent to commit the mistake of pushing Drusus, of becoming too articulate about his own point of view, which was somewhat different from Drusus’s. The six thousand men of the legion Silo had commanded at Arausio had died almost to the last noncombatant, and they had been Marsians, not Romans; it was the Marsi had sired them, the Marsi had armed them, the Marsi had paid for their upkeep in the field. An investment in humanity, time, and money that Rome had neither acknowledged afterward, nor offered compensation for.
Whereas Drusus dreamed of a general enfranchisement for the whole of Italy, Silo dreamed of secession from Rome, of a completely independent and united nation composed of all Italy that was not in the hands of the Romans—Italia. And when Italia came into existence—as Silo had vowed it would—the Italian peoples who comprised it would go to war against Rome and win, absorb Rome and the Romans into this new nation, together with all of Rome’s territories abroad.
Silo was not alone, and he knew he was not alone. During the past seven years he had journeyed all over Italy and even into Italian Gaul, sniffing out men of like mind and discovering that they were not thin on the ground. They were all leaders of their nations or peoples, and of two different kinds; those who—like Marius Egnatius, Gaius Papius Mutilus, and Pontius Telesinus—came from ancient noble families prominent in their nations; and those who— like Marcus Lamponius, Publius Vettius Scato, Gaius Vidacilius, and Titus Lafrenius—were relative New Men of present importance. In Italian dining rooms and Italian studies the talks had proceeded, and the fact that almost all the talking was done in Latin was not felt to be sufficient reason to forgive Rome her crimes.
The concept of a united Italian nation was not perhaps a novel one, but certainly it had never before been discussed as a viable alternative by the various Italian leaders. In the past, all hopes had been pinned upon gaining the full Roman franchise, becoming a part of a Rome which stretched undivided along the whole length and breadth of Italy; so senior was Rome in her partnership with her Italian Allies that they had thought along Roman lines—wanted to espouse Roman institutions, wanted to see their blood, their fortunes, their lands become a full and equal part of Rome.
Some of those who participated in the talks blamed Arausio, but there were those who blamed the mounting lack of support for the Italian cause among the Latin Rights communities, who now were beginning to regard themselves as a cut above mere Italians. Those blaming the Latin Rights communities could point with truth to an ever-increasing enjoyment of Latin Rights exclusivity, a need in the Latin Rights people to keep one segment of the peninsular populace inferior to themselves.
Arausio of course had been the culmination of decades of a soldier mortality which had seen the entire peninsula grow shorter and shorter of men, with all the concomitant evils of farms and businesses abandoned or sold for debt, and too few children and men young enough to work hard. But that soldier mortality had equally affected Romans and Latins too, so could not bear the entire blame. There were festering resentments against Roman landlords—the rich men who lived in Rome and farmed vast tracts called latifundia using only slave labor. There were too many cases of Roman citizens blatantly abusing Italians—employing their power and influence to flog the undeserving, take women who did not belong to them, and confiscate smallholdings to swell their own lands.
Just what had swayed the majority of those talking Italian secession away from wanting to force Rome to give them full citizenship and toward the formation of a separate and independent nation was unclear, even to Silo. His own conviction that secession was the only way had sprung out of Arausio, but those with whom he talked had not been at Arausio. Perhaps, he thought, this new determination to break away from Rome stemmed from sheer tiredness, a rooted feeling that the days when Rome gave away her precious citizenship were over, that the situation as it was at the moment was the way things were always going to be in the future. Insult had piled on top of injury to a point where life under Rome looked to an Italian unbearable, intolerable.
In Gaius Papius Mutilus, the leader of the Samnite nation, Silo found a man who seized upon the possibility of secession almost frantically. For himself, Silo did not hate Rome or Romans, only his own people’s predicament; but Gaius Papius Mutilus belonged to a people who had been Rome’s most obdurate and implacable foes since the tiny Roman community athwart the salt route of the Tiber had first begun to show its teeth. Mutilus hated Rome and Romans with every string that tied his heart, with every thought that grew to consciousness—and every thought that lay below it. He was a true Samnite, yearning to see every Roman ever born obliterated from the pages of history. Silo was Rome’s adversary. Mutilus was Rome’s enemy.
Like all congresses where the common cause was great enough to override every objection and every practical consideration, the Italian men who gathered at first merely to see if anything could be done quickly decided there was only one thing to be done—secede. However, every one of them knew Rome better than to think Italia could come into being without a war; for that reason, no one contemplated making any kind of declaration of independence for some years to come. Instead, the leaders of the Italian Allies concentrated upon preparing to make war upon Rome. It would require an enormous effort, huge sums of money— and more men than the years immediately after Arausio could possibly provide. A firm date was neither set nor mentioned; for the time being, while the Italian boy-children grew up, every atom of energy and money available was to go into the making of arms and armor, the stockpiling of sufficient quantities of war materials to make war with Rome—and a successful outcome—feasible.
Not much was ready to hand. Almost all the Italian soldier casualties had occurred far from Italy itself, and their arms and armor never seemed to reach home again, chiefly because it was Rome picked them up from the battlefield whenever possible—and naturally Rome forgot to label them “Allied.” Some arms could be legitimately purchased, but not nearly enough to equip the hundred thousand men Silo and Mutilus thought the new Italia would need to beat Rome. Therefore arming was a surreptitious business, and proceeded very slowly. Years would have to go by before the target could be met.
To make things more difficult, every undertaking had to be carried out beneath the noses of many people who would, did they learn what was going on, report immediately to someone Roman, or directly to Rome. The Latin Rights colonies clearly could not be trusted, any more than could wandering Roman citizens. So centers of activity and caches of equipment were concentrated in poor and remote areas far from Roman roads and travelers, far from Roman or Latin colonies. Every way the Italian leaders turned, they encountered mountainous difficulties and dangers. Yet the work of arming went on, and recently the work of training new soldiers had been added to it; for some Italian lads were growing up.
*
All of this secret knowledge Quintus Poppaedius Silo harbored as he slid easily into the mealtime conversation, and felt neither guilt nor anxiety because of it—who knew? Perhaps in the end it would be Marcus Livius Drusus who came up with the solution, peaceably and efficiently. Stranger things had happened!
“Quintus Servilius is leaving us for some months,” said Drusus to the others in general; it was a good change of subject.
Was that a flash of joy in Livia Drusa’s eyes? wondered Silo, who thought her a thoroughly nice woman, but had never been able to make up his mind what sort of woman she was—did she like her life, did she like Caepio, did she like living in her brother’s house? Instinct told him no to all those questions, but he could not be sure. And then he forgot all about Livia Drusa, for Caepio was talking about what he was going to do.
“... around Patavium and Aquileia especially,” Caepio was saying. “Iron from Noricum—I shall try to acquire the Noricum iron concessions—can supply foundries built around Patavium and Aquileia. The most important thing is that these areas of eastern Italian Gaul are very close to huge forests of mixed trees ideal for making charcoal. There are whole stands of beech and elm ready to be coppiced, my agents tell me.”
“Surely it’s the availability of iron dictates the location of foundries,” said Silo, now listening eagerly. “That’s why Pisae and Populonia grew into foundry towns, isn’t it? Because of the iron shipped directly from Ilva?”
“A fallacy,” said Caepio, waxing articulate for once. “In actual fact, it’s the availability of good charcoal-making trees makes Pisae and Populonia so desirable as foundry towns. The same will hold true in eastern Italian Gaul. The making of charcoal is a manufacturing process, and ironworks gulp down ten times the amount of charcoal they do of metal. That’s why my project in eastern Italian Gaul is as much to do with establishing towns of charcoal-makers as it is towns of steel-makers. I shall buy land suitable for the building of houses and workshops, then persuade smiths and charcoal-makers to settle in my little towns. Work will go on much easier among a number of similar little businesses than where a man is surrounded by many unrelated businesses.”
“But won’t the competition between all these similar little businesses be deadly, and buyers too hard to find?” asked Silo, concealing his mounting excitement.
“I don’t see why,” said Caepio, who really had studied his subject, and had made surprising headway in it. “If, for instance, a praefectus fabrum belonging to an army is looking for—say, ten thousand shirts of mail, ten thousand helmets, ten thousand swords and daggers, and ten thousand spears—isn’t he going to head for places where he can go from one foundry to another without needing to search a hundred back streets to find every single one? And won’t it be easier for a man owning a nice little foundry with— say, ten free men and ten slaves working for him—to sell what he produces without crying his wares all over town, because his clients know where to go?”
“You’re right, Quintus Servilius,” said Drusus thoughtfully. “The armies of the present do indeed require ten thousand steel thises and thats, and always in a hurry. It was different in the old days, when soldiers were men of property. On a lad’s seventeenth birthday his tata gave him his mail-shirt, his helmet, his sword, his dagger, his shield and his spears; his mama gave him his caligae, the cover for his shield, his kitbag, his horsehair plume and his sagum; and his sisters knitted him warm socks and wove him six or seven tunics. For the rest of his life he kept his gear— and in most cases, when his own campaigning days were over, he passed his gear on to his son or his grandson. But since Gaius Marius enlisted the Head Count in our armies, nine out of every ten recruits can’t even afford the price of a scarf to tie around their necks to prevent their mail-shirts from chafing—let alone have mothers and fathers and sisters able to fit them out like proper soldiers. All of a sudden we have whole armies of recruits as naked of military equipment as the least noncombatant in the old days. The demand has outstripped the supply—yet from somewhere it must be found! We cannot possibly send our legionaries into battle without the proper gear.”
“This answers a question,” said Silo. “I wondered why so many retired veterans were coming to me begging for loans to set themselves up in business as smiths! You are absolutely right, Quintus Servilius. It will be near enough to a generation before these projected steel centers of yours will have to start looking for something other than military gear to make. In fact, as leader of my people, I am scratching my head as to where to find arms and armor for the legions I have no doubt we’ll be asked to furnish for Rome in the not far distant future. The same must be true for the Samnites—and probably for the other Italian peoples too.”
“You should think of Spain,” said Drusus to Caepio. “I imagine there must still be forests near the iron mines.”
“In Further Spain, yes,” said Caepio, grinning delightedly because he was suddenly the center of respectful attention, a novel experience for him. “The old Carthaginian mines of the Orospeda have long exhausted their timber resources, but all the new mines are in well-forested areas.”
“How long will it be before your towns start producing?” asked Silo casually.
“In Italian Gaul, hopefully within two years. Of course,” added Caepio quickly, “I have nothing to do with the businesses or the goods they produce. I wouldn’t do anything which would incur displeasure from the censors. All I personally intend to do is to build the towns and then collect the rents—quite, quite proper for a senator.”
“Laudable of you,” said Silo ironically. “I hope you’re going to situate your towns on good waterways as well as in close proximity to forests.”
“I shall choose sites on navigable rivers,” said Caepio.
“The Gauls are good smiths,” said Drusus.
“But not organized enough to prosper as they ought,” said Caepio, and looked smug, an expression he was beginning to produce regularly. “Once I organize them, they’ll do much better.”
“Commerce is your forte, Quintus Servilius, I see it clearly,” said Silo. “You should abandon the Senate, become a knight. That way, you could own the foundries and charcoal works too.”
“What, and have to deal with people!” asked Caepio, appalled. “No, no! Let others do that!”
“Won’t you be collecting the rents in person?” asked Silo slyly, eyes directed at the floor.
“Certainly not!” cried Caepio, rising to the bait. “I am establishing a nice little company of agents in Placentia to do all that. It might be considered permissible for your cousin Aurelia to collect her own rents, Marcus Livius,” he said to Drusus, “but personally I consider it in very poor taste.”